


Peachy Keen

by flyingisland



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Anal Sex, Domestic Heith, M/M, Piercings, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 04:38:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14762733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingisland/pseuds/flyingisland
Summary: Hunk makes a mistake during a night out on the town. Keith's reaction is nothing that he could have expected, but maybe what he should have.





	Peachy Keen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackberry_peachx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackberry_peachx/gifts).



Daybreak is a single string of light. It stabs through the darkness of the blinds tacked tight against the edges of the windows, just above the bed where Hunk finds himself when he nods gradually into awareness.

At first, he doesn’t recognize the room around him, but he does recognize the throbbing of pain, dull and deep under the surface of his skin. It takes him a moment to remember that he isn’t a Paladin of Voltron anymore, and he isn’t waking up on the Castle Ship. He hasn’t been a soldier for awhile now, for enough years that he feels as though he should probably stop waking up under the delusion that coming home was just a dream.

But every morning, reliably, it takes him just a few moments of sleepy misery to realize just where he is, and just how much time has passed since he finally set foot on Earth again.

Even so, now that he’s affirmed that he is, in fact, on his home planet, he still isn’t entirely sure where he is on Earth. He doesn’t recognize the sheets tucked under his arms. He doesn’t recognize the patterns on the shadowy ceiling, or the strange way that someone has pushed thumbtacks into the corners of blankets over the windows, as though they’ve never heard of a curtain rod before.

But he does recognize the sweet smell of suntan lotion and the powdery, sugary scents that have become so integral to his memories of Lance that right away, the recognition of it fills him with relief. Contentment wraps itself around him, chasing away the prior anxiety of waking up in such an unfamiliar place.

Even the room becomes familiar soon enough, once his eyes focus in the darkness. The black blobs of clothes scattered on the floor materialize once he wakes up enough—all of the bottles sitting on the desk, pulled flush against his side of the bed, become clearer, more defined. He recognizes Lance’s messiness, the empty bottles of alcohol that they drank while watching movies last night. The pieces of memory flicker through his head—the  _ almost _ thoughts. The tendrils of something fuzzy and undefined that he can’t quite envision, no matter how hard he tries to concentrate on it. The bits and pieces of a blurry night that mean nothing to him, as he sifts through them desperately, in search of some kind of answer to how he got here, how long he’s been sleeping, and why he feels so terribly sore.

There’s a flash of Lance’s toothy smile, the warmth of an arm slung over his shoulder. There’s himself, dropping his phone as he works clumsy fingers over the buttons in a sloppy attempt to text Keith—and there’s laughter. Lance’s bubbly laughter. His own garbled laughter, growing louder and more slurred. There are lights and sounds flashing by so quickly that they’re practically indecipherable. There are the streaks of buildings passing in a dizzy night—open car windows and sunroofs, the scratchy seats in the back of a cab—and there’s the beeping of his phone, cutting through his drunken haze like the red hot blade of a knife.

Keith’s texts feel far too bright and saturated in his head now. Few words, little emotion—Keith never gives too much of himself away, even over the phone. Keith’s messages were simple and to the point. He remembers wondering if Keith regretted turning down their offer to join them. He remembers feeling guilty that he’d stayed out later than he’d promised—drinking more, leaving Lance’s house, even though he’d promised Keith that he wouldn’t let Lance drag him anywhere once they’d started drinking.

He wonders now if he can feign innocence since, for all he remembers, maybe he didn’t leave Lance’s house at all.

But he knows better than to think that he could ever lie to Keith. That Keith, despite how rough he can be around the edges, would ever be angry with him for just letting loose and having some fun for once—between their busy day-to-day, when more times than not, they barely have enough time to sleep, or eat, or really relax at all.

It almost makes him laugh now, the idea that at one point, any of them could have thought that all of this would be over once they got home.

But now, three years after Voltron retired and they’ve all began to settle down on Earth, he feels as though time has just continued to pick up speed.

He’s barreling through the months now, at a speed that feels dizzying no matter how hard he tries to focus on the days marked off on the calendar hanging on the fridge in his kitchen.

It feels as though life anymore is just one flash of events after another—the interviews, the lectures with new recruits at the Garrison. The time that he finds to visit his family back home, the award ceremonies that never feel any less awkward, no matter how many he attends.

Time isn’t one fluid drizzle of one second into another anymore. Time isn’t something that he feels as though he could ever hope to control.

Except, he thinks, for this very moment. Because try as he might, he can’t seem to pull himself out of bed. His head is throbbing, his chest still feels mysteriously tender, and his stomach feels so finicky that even the mere thought of making breakfast gives him such an intense sense of vertigo that it takes every ounce of his self control not to vomit right on the sheets pulled tight around him.

Next to him, under three layers of blankets, Lance stirs.

“How are you even alive right now?” Lance’s voice is muffled, and his words are still slightly slurred. He wriggles a bit, finding a more comfortable position that makes his words even harder to hear, before forcing out, “Allura’s coming over today and I’m… so not ready for this. God, she’s gonna kill me, isn’t she?”

Hunk’s laughter sounds more breathy and pained than he’d prefer right now, as he shuffles past the desk and drops his feet off of the edge of the bed. Lance’s room is cluttered even on the best of days, but he has a vague recollection of the two of them digging around for some video game last night that they ended up finding, hours later, already sitting in the disk tray of Lance’s gaming system.

Whether or not they ever got around to playing said game is completely lost on him, but at this moment in time, the television is dead and black. He can barely make out the shadow of himself moving about in the reflection on the screen, as he gropes around for his shoes in the dark.

Lance is moving about more now that Hunk’s warmth has left him. He laughs a little, the feeling of it rough in the back of his throat. He thinks about how suspicious Keith used to be, even before the two of them ended up together, of his relationship with Lance.

_ “You like me?” _ Keith had asked him, what feels now like a long time ago. All the way back when he’d first garnered the nerve to confess his feelings, and a pathetic bouquet of the few flora that he could find during a mission to an Earth-like planet. And he’d shoved both onto Keith, completely unannounced.

Keith had faltered for a moment, completely caught off guard. He’d said, abashedly, sputtered out awkwardly as he tried to understand exactly what Hunk wanted from him,  _ “I—I thought you… you and Lance…?” _

To Keith’s credit, he’d accepted the truth with a swiftness and grace that Hunk, shamefully, hadn’t afforded him when it came to his questionable closeness with Shiro. Even though, to his knowledge, Keith and Shiro don’t sleep together in the same bed when Keith flies out to spend a few days at Shiro’s place, and they definitely aren’t the type to drink in such excess alone together, until the memory of their first sip feels like nothing but a distant, murky dream.

“I can’t feel my tongue,” Lance says, in a voice that sounds to Hunk as though he’s just licked something frozen and gotten himself stuck, “I’m seriously so sunk, man! We’re supposed to be meeting with the embassy today—we’re supposed to be talking really important business! Do you think Keith’s gonna be as pissed as Allura is? I might need somewhere to hide out for a few days if things go south…”

It takes Hunk a moment to translate all the the  _ ‘th’ _ s to _ ‘s’ _ s. It takes him a little bit longer to put together all of the information that Lance has given him, and to consider if Keith would really be okay with Lance bunking with them for however long it might take for Allura to cool down.

He can’t imagine that Keith would be pleased about it. Even though the dust has more than settled from their more terrible scuffles back in the early days of the Garrison, even though Keith, at times, seems to regard Lance as somewhat of a friend, Hunk still understands that Lance can be a little much for someone like Keith.

He can be a little loud, a little pushy. He’s opinionated about things that Keith will never have the patience to even care about. And he doesn’t hold his tongue when often, the average person would have developed the proper filter to understand that staying quiet might be the best course of action.

Hunk considers all of these to be admirable traits of Lance’s, in the right situations. But he can’t deny that sometimes Lance’s more outrageous qualities are akin to dumping oil on top of Keith’s fire. The two of them, Hunk thinks, are fine in small doses. They get along just fine with a common mission to force them to stay on task.

But he isn’t sure if he’d risk the inevitable destruction that might be sleeping in his, and his innocent apartment’s future if he actually allowed Lance to stay for awhile after Allura allegedly freaks out.

And, now that he’s picked out his pants from the mess on the floor, he realizes that he isn’t sure what’s wrong with Lance’s tongue either, that’s causing his speech to sound so unclear.

Before he has a chance to question any of this, Lance asks him, “How’re yourth feelin’, buddy? Shtill ath sthore ath mine?”

Hunk stares at Lance for a long moment after that, raising both eyebrows and idly running the palms of his hands over his shirt. He has a sneaking suspicion about which part of himself Lance is referring to—but with growing horror, he frantically reassures himself that it can’t be a reality until Lance himself confirms it.

Keith doesn’t mind these all-nighters that he sometimes pulls with Lance. He doesn’t mind that Hunk sometimes drinks in excess just for fun, that he follows Lance out to nightclubs and bars that Keith himself would surely never be caught dead in. He doesn’t mind that Hunk likes to live a different life sometimes, that he wants to be social. That he wants to have fun.

Keith has never been bothered by his lack of discipline, even if Keith himself might truly be the king of it.

But this… If, last night, he really did what Lance is implying—

He grimaces when Lance prods out his tongue, showing off the small metal bar stabbing through it.

“You think the babes are gonna be into this once it heals?”

Hunk wonders if it’s the hangover or the horror—but regardless, he feels like he might be sick.

As he gathers his things more hurriedly, apologizes to Lance, and shoves his way out of the door, Lance calls behind him, “Don’t forget, Hunk! Don’t touch them for six months! And clean them every day!”

The words are still so terribly slurred that he can’t comprehend them for quite some time. But they swirl around in his thoughts nonetheless—a welcomed distraction from the aching in his chest, and the dread that’s gradually fizzling with the sickness in his belly.

When he reaches the street, he realizes that he’d neglected to find his socks in the dark. He walks without them, grimacing as his feet rub the insides of his shoes. He reasons with himself that his and Keith’s apartment is only a few blocks away. And surely, sore feet are going to be the least of his problems once he walks through the door and finally unleashes whatever monstrosity is hiding under his shirt—and continues rubbing very uncomfortably against it—on an unwitting Keith.

The sun, peeking between the tops of buildings as he shuffles through bustling sidewalks, is just a little bit too bright for his liking. His head pounds, his stomach turns, and more than anything, he wishes that he could just get home and throw himself back into bed. He yearns for the soft sheets, the plush mattress pad that himself and Keith had spent nearly an hour wrestling over the mattress a few weeks ago. And he laughs at the memory of that—how Keith had looked so disheveled and scandalized, as though he’d wanted nothing more than to activate his blade and tear the poor thing to shreds.

_ “We defeat Zarkon, no problem, right? But after everything, this little piece of shit is what does us in.” _

Hunk had laughed so hard at Keith’s rare joke, that it had taken them an extra thirty minutes to actually get the edges of the pad around the corners. But that night, Hunk knows that Keith had also noticed the difference.

He’d slept more comfortably, spread himself out like a cat bathing in the sun. He’d trusted that Hunk knew what he was talking about when he’d suggested buying it. Even as he’d gotten angry with the process of putting it on, there had never been a moment in which he’d doubted Hunk’s decision to bring it home.

And now, he also knows, that Keith might look at him in the very same way that he’d glared at that pad—as though his fingers are itching for the hilt of his blade, and he’s already plotting out a plan of action to rid himself of Hunk’s many dismembered body parts without getting caught by the police.

To Keith’s credit, Hunk thinks that he could get away with murder just fine. He’s smart, he’s quick, he’s well versed in many different modes of survival. As much as he loves his boyfriend and as proud as he is of him, he can’t help but admit that this thought doesn’t manage to make him feel any better about his current—miserable, terrible—predicament.

He can see their apartment building looming on the horizon now. He can feel every nerve in his body screaming at him to run in the opposite direction. He isn’t sure which one he’d fare better against now—an angry Allura or an angry Keith—but at least he knows that Allura wouldn’t be mad at him, personally. At least he knows that Allura wouldn’t give a damn if he admitted to her that he might have gotten something pierced last night, but he isn’t absolutely sure which part of him it was.

Six months is a long time not to touch something, he thinks. Especially for someone like Keith, who likes to touch as much of him as possible, as often as humanly possible.

But Keith surprises him often, he knows this. Keith rarely lashes out, rarely overreacts or yells at him when things don’t go just how he wanted them to. They have a few years under their belt now, as a couple. They’ve had countless opportunities in which Hunk might have thought that Keith would badger him, but Keith accepted whatever he’d confessed to him without question.

He knows that, for years, the team—himself included—had the wrong idea about Keith. The “hot head”, the firecracker. The least reliable member of their team, who might venture off and ruin a mission just because he’d allowed himself to get too worked up over something.

He knows that Keith isn’t perfect, but he still feels guilty, so many years later. For thinking that Keith might be the kind of person who would attack him over breaking a glass, or watching something that he doesn’t like on TV. The sort of person who wouldn’t be willing to let him live his own life and have fun, the kind of lover who would never lower himself to being gentle when he wanted as much of his partner as he could, at once.

He’s suddenly feeling just a little bit overheated. And he knows that it’s because he’s thinking now of how surprised he’d been, the very first time that they’d slept together, and Keith had been so gentle with him that he’d thought he must have been hallucinating.

Keith had kissed him so many times that his head had felt like it was spinning. He’d run calloused fingers over his chest, dipped them under the waistline of his underwear, stroked him gently—-lovingly, even. And he’d never stopped looking in his eyes.

Hunk had seen his own reflection staring back at him in the depths of those deep, dilated blacks. He’d felt as though he was drowning at sea, as though he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think under the transfixing weight of Keith’s ironclad stare.

But he’d found vulnerability in Keith then—a softness that he never would have expected to find. Keith had called him beautiful in the voice of a man terrified of losing something precious. He’d buried himself inside of Hunk so slowly that their first time had felt as though it might go on forever.

With lips on Hunk’s skin, on his lips, on his throat—with fingers touching everywhere, taking great care to memorize as many parts of Hunk’s body as he possibly could in such a small lapse of hours that they’d found alone together.

He’d moved at a sluggish tempo. He’d taken all of the time that he could.

And he’d told Hunk,  _ “I love you” _ as though the words could ever sound natural tumbling out of those pretty, untrained lips.

Keith was never taught how to be kind, Hunk knows this. He was never taught to be happy, to love. He was raised to fight for everything that he has. He was brought up in an empty world, with a desperate heart. As a child without tethers to the universe around him, searching desperately for something solid and warm and safe to anchor himself onto.

But he’d touched Hunk, that first time, like someone who had loved a thousand times before. Hunk had felt the passion inside of him then, that ever-fanning flame, so intense that Hunk had felt as though he might cry.

He understands that Keith loves him, that those feelings can’t be anything but absolutely real. And he trusts Keith to make the decisions that he feels might be the best for him. He knows, deep down, that the same Keith who held him so tenderly would never lash out at him for making a small mistake.

And while the size of this mistake is debatable, he reassures himself that, surely, everything will be okay.

Hunk fools himself into thinking that this won’t be a big deal. He convinces himself that if Keith doesn’t make an event out of it, maybe everything can continue on, just as it has for years before today.

He’s spent enough time with Keith to know that he holds those who he loves to incredibly low standards. He’ll accept anything from Shiro, from Hunk himself—from everyone who, to this day, he’s still terrified to lose.

That thought makes him feel even more sick to his stomach than he did before.

He doesn’t want Keith to quietly accept this. He doesn’t want Keith to brush it off and pretend that everything is fine, even if it really isn’t.

And he doesn’t want to stop Keith from touching any part of him—not when those fingers and those lips are so intoxicating. Not when he loves being pulled apart just as much as Keith loves to watch him come untangled.

He shakes his head, chasing those thoughts away just as he reaches the stairs leading up to the entrance of their apartment. He fiddles around in his pockets for his keys, relieved to find that he hadn’t left them back at Lance’s place.

He turns the key in the lock, shrugging off the last of his nerves before stepping into the foyer. When he closes the door behind him and pockets his keys, he allows himself a moment of weakness.

He draws in a deep, shaking breath. He rolls back his shoulders and stretches out the kinks in his back. He imagines that he didn’t do anything particularly stupid last night, that he can walk up those stairs and enter his apartment, and he can tell Keith, “ _ Yeah, it was fun, but I’m kind of tired. I need a shower, then a nap.” _

And when Keith elects to join him in said shower, maybe there won’t be anything terrible hiding underneath his clothes.

Maybe, Lance was just blowing smoke when he’d implied that Hunk had made the same dumb, drunken decision that he had. Maybe he’s blown all of this out of proportion once again, and even if he did do something stupid, Keith will laugh it off and reassure him that everything is fine.

And maybe it will be. Maybe he’s just a fool for thinking so little of Keith.

It’s a nice fantasy, at the very least. It’s enough to give him the strength to trudge up the stairs, to compel him forward, towards what he’s sure might be his inevitable doom.

When he reaches his apartment door, he allows himself another pause to compose himself. His keys jingle when he pulls them from his pocket again, as he flips through them in search of the one for their door. He can hear the television buzzing softly through the wood, can hear glasses clinking together and water turning on and off. He can imagine Keith inside now, kept company by the voices on the TV, keeping his hands busy with various chores while he waits for Hunk to get home.

He feels guilty, suddenly, for never answering any of Keith’s texts last night. When he pulls his phone out and flips through his notifications, he can see that all three of Keith’s messages went unanswered.

**_Baby 12:45 A.M._ ** _ : Are you staying over at Lance’s house tonight? _

**_Baby 1:51 A.M._ ** _ : I’m going to bed. Good night. _

**_Baby 6:23 A.M._ ** _ : Call me when you wake up. _

Keith never gets on his case too much for ignoring messages, just as he’s learned to stop worrying about it when Keith also ignores his. The two of them have trouble at times like this—connecting when they’re busy, when one is free and the other isn’t, and over time, the two of them have grown more comfortable trusting that things will be okay.

He imagines that Keith just worries about his well being, that he knows better than to think that any danger here on Earth could kill his boyfriend when none of the more treacherous enemies out in space ever managed to.

And he knows that Keith has nothing but to utmost faith in him—not to do anything to betray him. Not to meet up with anyone who Keith doesn’t know or doesn’t trust. Not to go to some seedy tattoo and piercing parlor that’s willing to do work on intoxicated people, and mutilate his body in some awful way that he’s still too terrified to investigate.

He doesn’t know how Keith feels about body modification. He doesn’t really know how he feels about it either.

It was commonplace back home to get tattoos. It was a normal part of life that he’d taken part in as well. Keith seems to adore the markings wrapping around from his chest, to his shoulder, to his back. He traces the intricate lines of Hunk’s tattoo lazily during sleepy, early mornings when Hunk manages to keep him in bed.

But he doesn’t know about piercings. He isn’t sure if maybe there’s a boundary there that he should have known better than to cross, or if maybe the two of them should have talked about this before he went off and just did it without thinking harder about it.

He knows that Lance had looked just about as silly as he’d sounded this morning, and surely, the public won’t take kindly to two of the infamous Voltron Paladins parading around with two of the more erotic piercings that a person can get.

At the very least, whatever he’s done to himself is easy to hide. And if he’s honest with himself, he’ll admit that Lance’s tongue piercing will only amplify his silly reputation with the public as a playboy.

Even though, Hunk knows, Lance still manages to strike out with the ladies more times than his playful flirtations ever actually work.

He isn’t even entirely sure why Lance still flirts, still stokes the flames of public opinion, still compels the people around him to believe that he’s willing to sleep around, when everyone who really knows him knows that he only has eyes for their previous Pink Paladin.

He imagines that it’s probably just deeply ingrained in Lance’s general personality. To never take anything too seriously, to always gravitate towards the next fun situation, to experience life as a person who won’t say no to anything, even if the aftermath of his decisions might lead to more hot water than any normal person could reasonably bear.

But he thinks that maybe that’s what he likes so much about Lance. He can make a dumb decision and no one will bat an eye. He can be a responsible leader when he needs to be, but he never finds himself so caught up in even the smallest consequences of his action that he’ll allow a good opportunity to pass him by.

Hunk wonders, running a hand through his hair to push it into a more presentable shape, if maybe his life would be easier if he were as carefree as Lance. If maybe Lance wouldn’t be agonizing over revealing his piercing to his long-time, loving boyfriend.

If maybe Keith would be more receptive to supporting such a dumb decision if Hunk himself weren’t taking it entirely too seriously.

With one last deep breath, he turns his key and pushes open the door. It’s warmer inside, darker in a way that immediately rushes relief through his aching head. Keith is washing dishes in the kitchen—a corner of tiles off in the far right corner of the room, separated only by a small half-wall that their tiny, two-person kitchen table is propped against. The television, pressed against the opposite side of said wall and facing their tattered loveseat, is playing what appears to be a movie marathon of old karate flicks. Hunk allows his eyes to travel from Bruce Lee kicking ass in a yellow jumpsuit, to the half-drank cup of tea slowly steaming on the coffee table. To the curtains pulled open just enough to welcome in enough natural light to illuminate the room—to Keith turning around to watch him as he steps inside, wordless and unreadable as he scrubs idly at the plate in his hands with the scratchy side of a kitchen sponge.

Hunk smiles weakly, raising his hand and sending Keith a tiny, jerky wave. He closes the door behind him, tossing his keys down on the small end table next to the door. He kicks off his shoes, placing them neatly next to Keith’s own, just across from the welcome mat.

Keith doesn’t budge for a moment, just stands there with the dripping dish in his hand, the other still raised as though he might just continue scrubbing as though nothing else has changed. Hunk feels trapped under his gaze, like a rabbit watching a coyote drawing nearer—like prey that isn’t entirely sure yet if running away is the best option, if the predator has even spotted it yet. If the end has really come so soon now, and the last ditch gamble for his own life might be walking backwards into the hall, and trudging back to Lance’s apartment for the next few weeks.

But then, Keith shrugs, scoffing through his teeth and turning back to the sink. Hunk also feels guilty for the sigh of relief that pushes out of his lungs. He feels incredibly foolish for always making such a big deal out of these things, when Keith has never given him a reason to.

But he feels as though—since he’s seen firsthand what Keith is capable of, since he understands more than enough that his lover could probably murder him with that scratchy little kitchen sponge alone, if he so wanted to—that maybe Keith doesn’t need to be mean to him to rightly terrify him.

And maybe, that little hint of danger is exactly the kind of thing that originally attracted him to Keith.

He’s never been particularly adventurous. If he’d had his way with the whole Voltron situation, he might have chosen just to stay back at the Garrison instead.

He knows that Keith takes those opportunities eagerly. He knows that Keith is more than willing to put his entire life on the line for the next big adventure, the next big fight, the next big exciting, dangerous thing that hurls itself their way.

And maybe Hunk admires that about him. Maybe Hunk’s own dangerous streak has manifested itself in the form of him finding himself the most murderous, bravest, ruthless killing machine of a person and calling them his boyfriend.

Maybe there’s a part of him that might find it kind of kinky, even, if Keith were to punish him for staying out too late.

He tries to convince himself that the idea of that doesn’t make him inappropriately excited, given the current state of things.

Keith might not be angry with him now, but he imagines that assaulting him while he still reeks of alcohol, after spending so much time away from home without warning, might push Keith over that tender threshold between slightly aggravated and thirsty for blood.

He takes a few tentative steps into the room, running his hand over the back of the loveseat before looping around and taking a seat. He’s careful and slow in his movements, as though he really does believe Keith to be some sort of predator that might strike at any moment—and he’s still having trouble convincing himself that the thought of that isn’t riling him up.

“Did you have fun last night?” Keith asks him suddenly, in an even deadpan, as he rinses off the plate that he’s been working on and sets it on the drying rack. “Did Lance forget that he had a meeting this morning? I bet Allura’s gonna kill him this time.”

Hunk breathes a nervous laugh, smoothing out the wrinkles in his pants as he peers around the TV at Keith’s back.

“Y-yeah, it was okay. I feel kinda sick today though. I might just, you know, shower and take a nap.”

Keith usually isn’t the biggest fan of naps, Hunk has learned, but he doesn’t react when Hunk proposes this idea. And Hunk drowns in his silence, in his lack of anger or accusation. He feels as though, even though Keith surely has no idea why he should be angry yet, Hunk deserves nothing more right now than some form of disappointment. Some kind of lecture. Something just unpleasant enough to bring a sense of realism to all of this—even though he understands very well that he’s expecting that sort of thing from the absolute last person who would ever waste time giving a lecture.

Keith, in general, finds that voicing his own concerns is a waste of time. He doesn’t like hashing out his feelings. He doesn’t like lingering on old slights and working on a way to fix things.

If he’s unhappy, he sometimes voices his grievances, but immediately after, he’s eager to move on. He assumes that the issues is fixed—done and over with—and he never wastes his breath or his own mental capacity feeling bitter or burned by any accidental missteps that Hunk might make in this relationship.

Sometimes, that sort of lowkey, laid back dynamic is very freeing. It’s just the kind of breathing room that Hunk thinks that he needs.

But now, he wishes that Keith were more like Lance, or Pidge, or even Allura. He wishes that Keith understood just how stupid of a thing he did last night, and he wishes that Keith were the kind of person to belittle him for said stupid thing.

And he doesn’t really understand why.

Maybe, he thinks, it might make him feel less guilty now.

Keith turns on the water again, rinsing out a few glasses, washing a few more plates. Then he drains the sink slowly, silent all the while. Hunk listens to the water sucking down the drain, to the antagonists on TV giving some kind of long-winded speech. He convinces himself that there’s trouble now, that maybe they’ll have a real fight. They haven’t even bickered over anything as mundane as what to have for dinner in what feels like ages. He thinks, maybe Keith has just gotten to a certain point, where he knows what sorts of things to expect from someone like Hunk.

Maybe he’s convinced himself that it isn’t worth fighting out when he knows that nothing that he says is going to make Hunk any better or worse of a boyfriend than he already is.

He doesn’t exactly love the thought of that, but he can imagine that Keith, in his simple, soft way, might be able to articulate these thoughts in a manner that might make him feel a lot less like a deadbeat than he’s making himself feel right now.

When the sink is drained, Keith washes the suds from his hands. And he turns, towel in hand, and takes a few steps further into the kitchen, as though he might walk all the way over to the couch.

“Are you gonna throw up?”

Keith’s question is simple, but it still manages to catch Hunk by surprise. And before he can control himself, or stop the terrible words from tumbling out of his mouth, he’s shooting up out of his seat—charging across the few feet between them and grabbing Keith by the shoulders at such an alarming rate that even Keith manages to look a little bit horrified. He takes a hurried step back, flinching just as Hunk touches him. He’s dropped the rag between them now, his eyes wide and rounded in surprise, his mouth slightly agape.

“Hunk, what—”

“I did something really stupid, okay?! I don’t really remember how it happened and I don’t really remember what I did, but I know it was really dumb, and I totally understand if you don’t ever want to forgive me, and if maybe this is too much and you’re done with my shit, and you think that you wanna find someone who can control themselves, but just remember that I love you a lot, and—-and—”

Keith is staring at him now as though he’s lost his mind. His gaze is locked on Hunk’s face, his hands still raised defensively between them even as Hunk pulls back.

And when Hunk all but tears his shirt up, revealing his chest to the open air and the first relief from that awful rubbing that he’s felt all day, Keith doesn’t offer much of a reaction.

Hunk himself can’t find the nerve to look down. He doesn’t want to see whatever horrible tattoo he’d agreed to get. He doesn’t want to know if they just cut his nipples off, or if they mangled them so terribly that they won’t even look like human nipples anymore.

But Keith steps closer, in what feels like slow motion. Keith’s cold fingers cause an ache to shoot up under his skin, immediately after they make contact.

“You… are… are those  _ real _ ?”

Hunk hisses at the contact, making a point to grasp Keith’s wrist gently as he pries him away.

“They look good,” Keith tells him, “I wouldn’t have pegged you as the kind of guy who felt comfortable around needles.”

When Hunk finally does manage to look down, his nipples are, at the very least, swollen. But through the center of each is a small metal bar, just like the one that he’d seen in Lance’s tongue this morning.

He doesn’t have the heart to tell Keith that he really isn’t good with needles at all. And that, even now, the mere thought of someone poking one through his skin is making him feel very queasy.

But the piercings don’t look nearly as bad as he would have thought. A spare glance in Keith’s direction greets him with the sight of Keith staring at them as though he’s a starving man, and Hunk’s nipples are an endless feast. It’s a dumb metaphor, and finally, such a ridiculous thought brings all of that much-needed realism crashing down around him.

His cheeks feel hot, and he pulls his shirt back down a lot rougher than he knows that he should.

He looks at Keith then, fully, ignoring the disappointment evident in the way that Keith clicks his tongue and flicks his gaze away.

“Are you seriously not mad about this?”

His voice is meeker than he wishes that it could be right now. His words are jumpy and uneasy, and it seems as though Keith is hyper aware of just how much he’s stressed himself out over this.

“It’s your body,” Keith tells him blithely, waving a hand idly in the air, as though to dismiss the whole prospect of caring too much about any of this, “Plus, they look good. So who cares?”

Hunk swallows thickly. For a moment, every ounce of tension fizzles out from his muscles, leaving him feeling only tired, sore, and desperately in need of a shower.

“I… I guess that’s true. I just thought, you know, maybe you’d be mad that I didn’t talk to you about doing it first.”

Keith spits a laugh, but true to his usual placid demeanor, he doesn’t smile, or offer any indication that he thinks that any of this is particularly funny.

“You think you need my permission to get your nipples pierced?”

When he phrases it like that, Hunk does suddenly feel very silly about all of this. He feels as though, once again, he’s allowed his imagination to run wild. He’s let his guilty, fearful nature get the better of him, when Keith has never given him a good reason to be wary of this very specific situation.

And he feels as though he doesn’t appreciate Keith enough, as though, maybe, he really should consider throwing all caution and Lance’s slurred warnings to the wind and allow Keith to prod at these new piercings. Maybe, if he’d allow Keith to satiate this curiosity of his, they’d be on more even ground. And he wouldn’t feel anymore as though Keith was constantly giving him exactly what he needed out of this relationship, as he just continued to take.

But Lance’s warning still rings in his thoughts. His hurried instructions to keep them clean and keep Keith’s eager fingers from messing with them too much. He isn’t sure exactly what might happen if he doesn’t leave them alone, but he promises himself that he’ll take the time to look up information online, at the very least, once he’s clean and well-rested.

He rubs a hand over his face, backing away with the intention of finally taking a much-needed shower. It’s the first step, at least, to getting himself to the point where he can actually think more clearly about all of this.

Keith moves forward as though to follow him. They pause for a moment—Hunk, frozen under Keith’s unyielding gaze, Keith, watching him as though he’s ready to pounce at the first opportunity.

“Well, bad news is that you can’t mess with them for six months. Sorry, man, doctor’s—uh,  _ piercer’s _ —orders.”

And that, finally, does manage to get a rise out of Keith.

He ducks away just as Keith lurches forward, scurrying in the least admirable, most cowardly manner that he possibly can in his current poor state, in their small, narrow apartment.

Keith rounds the hall after him, charging after him with his shoulders squared, his hands in tight fists at his sides. Hunk can see him peeking over his shoulder when he opens the bathroom door. His infuriated expression is red-stained under the yellow glow of the bathroom light, his lips pulled flat in an angry line, his brows low and arched as he grabs the edge of the door before Hunk can close it behind him.

“Are you serious?  _ Six months _ ? What the Hell am I supposed to do until then?!”

Hunk laughs, turning to face Keith more fully now, as he reaches down to unbuckle his belt.

“You’re just going to have to wait, dude. Patience yields focus, right? I’m sure you’ll enjoy it more after you’ve had to wait.”

And with that, he considers the matter over. Done with. Taken care of for the next six months, as Keith barely seems to remember that the piercings are there at all.

They sit over breakfast in the mornings, as though nothing strange is going on between them. They go about their business—rushing off to various space-alliance related meetings, interviews with future flight students at the Galaxy Garrison, charity functions and the dreaded award ceremonies—the mundane day-to-day that’s become all-too commonplace for the both of them.

Sometimes, they see each other so rarely that Hunk almost forgets the comfortable routine between them. Sometimes, they have so much time together that Hunk can’t remember a time when he ever felt unhappy or lonely before.

At night, when they cuddle together, Keith is mindful of his new piercings. He never pushes the envelope as Hunk might have expected of him. He never makes another issue out of the fact that he’s been kept at bay, that he’s impatient and just wants the next six months to get over with so he can touch all of Hunk that his fingers can possibly reach, as Hunk knows that he usually prefers.

When they make love, sometimes, when Keith is buried deep inside of him, when the two of them are wrapped in the silent dark of the night, he almost imagines that he can see Keith’s eyes settling on the glints of the silver catching whatever light from the streets has managed to creep through their curtains.

And he thinks sometimes, that Keith looks hungry. He looks as though he’d love nothing more than to sink his claws into Hunk and make a meal out of him.

Hunk isn’t unfamiliar with that side of Keith. He isn’t unfamiliar with feeling like prey, stalked by a silent predator.

He loves every minute of it, too, of feeling as though he’s toeing such a delicate line. Of feeling as though Keith is somehow dangerous, and knowing that while Keith could truly hurt him, he’d never push himself hard enough to make that a reality.

But it’s weird, after awhile, the longer that Keith keeps himself from making a move. It’s alarming, almost, when Keith is nearly too good at respecting his wishes not to be touched without pushing his limits even remotely.

Hunk knows that Keith is a good boyfriend, but he also knows Keith’s flaws.

The absence of any fuss about all of this only begins to culminate a growing anxiety in the pits of his belly.

An anxiety that he knows entirely too well might be more accurately described as baited excitement.

He just doesn’t want to admit that he’s looking forward to being ambushed. He wants nothing more than to find himself in the grasp of Keith’s eager claws.

He wants nothing short of being pulled open and torn apart by Keith—ravished until he knows nothing but the feeling of Keith’s fingers on his skin, the heat and the slick girth of Keith’s cock buried deep inside of him, and the feeling of those teeth and that wet tongue so hot and so rough and so  _ everywhere _ , somehow all at once.

Hunk realizes, after three months pass, that he might be even more starving than Keith.

He eyes the piercings in the mirror each morning after a shower, noting how the swelling has gone down, how they don’t feel quite as stiff or stuck the more he rotates the bar, the more he cleans them with antibacterial soap, the more he keeps an eye on them.

He stops noticing the drag of his clothing against them—stops catching himself growing aroused at inopportune times just because the feeling of them tugging against his shirt reminds him entirely too much of Keith’s touch that’s been neglecting them for far too long.

And eventually, he stops thinking about them altogether. He gets used to the absence of Keith’s fingers tugging at them, the lost sensation of Keith’s dull nails pinching just hard enough into the skin that it hurts just right. He forgets how it must have felt when Keith would take one of his nipples into his mouth and suck at it lightly, how it must have been to stare down at Keith’s dark hair splayed out over his chest, his thick lashes resting like dark crow’s wings against the cloudy white of his cheekbones.

He convinces himself that it’s fine. Six months is almost up. It’s pathetic, even, that he’s mourning something as simple and pitiful as his boyfriend playing with his nipples, when he knows entirely too well that Keith surely hasn’t forgotten.

On the first day, after six months have passed, Hunk doesn’t realize how long it’s been. He gave up counting the days nearly two months ago. He never got around to marking it on his calendar. He’d felt odd about the mere concept of being that noticeably excited, convinced himself that he could play coy even with himself, if only so he didn’t get his hopes up and inevitably feel disappointed when their schedules didn’t line up just right.

But the day falls on a rare break, a day off that they both share, a slow lapse of excitement during all of their schedules, during which they can pretend that everything truly has gone back to normal now that they’ve made it home to Earth.

He wakes up as the sun outside of the window bleeds through the curtains. He rolls over in bed and drags a palm over the empty spot on the mattress, that Keith has left long enough that it’s gotten cold.

He scratches at his chest, barely even noting the pull of the fabric against the steel bars of his piercings. He stares at the various patterns that his eyes make in the ceiling spackle, imagining that he might be hearing Keith in the kitchen, or in the shower, or even the clinking of Keith’s weights falling back into their holders in the spare room that they’ve converted into Keith’s mini-gym.

Only after he’s allowed the last remnants of sleep to fade out of his fuzzy thoughts does he reach around blindly under the blankets for his phone. Lazily, he drags his finger over the screen to enter the pattern of his password, and he isn’t too surprised to see that Lance has sent him a text.

The contents of said text send the reality of this last torturous half-year crashing down around him. And he feels, as his eyes roam over Lance’s words, as though he’s just as sick and sore as he was that day, six months ago, when this whole silly situation first started.

**_Lance 7:45 A.M._ ** _ : Today’s the day, champ! Finally get to touch those sweet nip piercings. You guys celebrating? ;) _

It’s a weird thought, that Lance would even remember. He decides not to question it. He decides to favor his own mental health, and not delve down the long, winding rabbit hole of why Lance does  _ anything _ that he does, and just accept the fact that the state of Hunk’s nipples mattered enough that he’d save the date of their metaphorical freedom.

He scrubs a hand over his face, caging his groan behind his palm. He hates the excitement that bubbles up inside of him—hates the way that he wishes that Lance were right anyway, that they  _ are _ going to celebrate, even if he hates the way that he phrased it.

He hates that he’s probably been wrong about any of this—because he’d expected all this time that Keith would pester him awake at the earliest hour, prodding him to finally pull up his nightshirt and allow Keith to explore the new additions to his anatomy, no matter how much he’d reasoned with himself that Keith’s impatience has never compelled him to be so rude.

But at the very least, he would have liked to have been right about that impatience. He might have acted exasperated if Keith had jumped him first thing in the morning, if only so, he admits with only the slightest amount of shame in his head, Keith might not realize that he’s been counting down the days as well.

Instead, he’s alone now, wondering if he should even dignify Lance’s question with an honest response. And wondering if he’s too ashamed to admit to Lance that Keith didn’t even remember the date—even though he knows with certainty that it would be ridiculous to expect Keith to mark this sort of thing in his day planner.

Which, Hunk doesn’t even think that Keith has.

But he doesn’t think that he’s willing to lie to Lance about this either. Keith never talks about their sex life to other people, but he can already imagine it:

Lance making some crude joke about the two of them getting busy exactly on the dot, and Keith’s confused, exasperation expression. Keith turning that fiery glare on him then, accusing him silently and feeling even slightly betrayed.

Knowing with certainty that not only had Hunk been bragging about their sexual endeavors to as big of a chatterbox as Lance, but that Hunk had even had the gall to  _ lie _ about them—as though their sex life wasn’t already so amazing that the truth could stand firmly on its own.

But he knows that he’s thinking too hard about this. He knows that Keith rises earlier than he does, still doesn’t feel comfortable enough with cuddling to initiate it half the time, and he’s so much of a busybody that he can’t stand lying around in bed for even a few minutes after he wakes up.

He’s always tinkering with something—working out in the spare room, or taking a jog around the city early in the morning. Flipping through the channels for any old kung fu movies, or trying his hand at one of the simple meals that he knows how to prepare in the kitchen.

He cleans often too, Hunk knows. He takes good care of their apartment. Sometimes, Hunk will never admit to even Keith himself, he’s even caught Keith watering the small collection of plants that he’d swore up and down he didn’t care about a bit when Hunk had brought them home.

But he never stays in bed. And in all the time that Hunk has lived with him, Keith has never woken him up unless the two of them had some kind of important meeting to attend.

Hunk knows this, but he can’t help but feel a little bit moody about it anyway. And he doesn’t like feeling that way, being this person. He doesn’t like the realization that he can be petty enough to judge Keith for not being attracted enough to him to harass him for sex before he’s even completely woken up.

It’s not fair. He knows that it’s not fair.

But he feels, deep down, as though maybe he’s more disappointed by the idea that Keith, for once, wasn’t more impatient about something seemingly so silly as he was.

With a groan, he finally pulls himself out of bed. When he’s paying enough attention, he realizes that there are no identifying noises coming from anywhere in the apartment. There is no shower running, no television. There’s no clanking in the kitchen, no clattering of metal from the spare room.

It’s absolutely, startlingly silent.

Suddenly, Hunk feels very, very on edge.

Keith isn’t a completely quiet housemate. And Keith definitely isn’t the kind of person to leave at random without telling Hunk where he’s gone.

It’s too late in the day for Keith to have went on a jog, and Keith isn’t one to visit the grocery store for much of anything, even if he really wants it.

Hunk doesn’t know what to make of any of this, but he shoves his anxiety far down in his chest, ignoring it in favor of collecting some casual clothes for the day—something airy, something nice. Something that he thinks might make him look more appealing to Keith.

He steps out into the hall, reassuring himself that he’s absolutely not freaked out when he still hears no noises from anywhere in the apartment around him.

It’s surely not completely unheard for Keith to step outside for some fresh air. And it’s nice outside, he tells himself. It’s warm enough that the windows have all been pulled open, and the refreshing, early Spring breeze from outside is all that they’ve needed today to cool their apartment.

He imagines that maybe Keith went out to get breakfast. Maybe he went out to meet up with Lance, or Allura, or to make a phone call to Shiro. Maybe Pidge pulled herself away from a busy work day to get ahold of them, but he knows that Pidge would have called him first. And his phone is yielding no evidence of something like that happening. He doesn’t remember Keith at any point trying to tell him that Pidge needed a call back.

It’s weird, yeah, but nothing particularly substantial. It’s not the end of the world.

So Keith left for awhile, so what? He’s an adult. He’s a hero. He’s a former Paladin of Voltron turned Blade of Marmora turned universe saver turned regular guy just trying to get acclimated to city life after living alone for so long. He’s a big boy who can make his own decisions. He’s responsible and level-headed enough that, if he left, Hunk needs to trust that it was for a good reason.

It’s nothing to worry about, Hunk tells himself.

And so, to distract himself from these rampant thoughts, he steps into the bathroom and turns on the shower—as hot as it goes. He wants to feel the relief of it in his muscles. He wants to be so clean and comfortable that maybe he won’t even care that Keith seems intent now to ignore him.

He stops himself short of thinking,  _ ‘On such a special day.’ _

He might be vulnerable to small bouts of childishness from time to time, but he’s not going to allow himself to stoop that low.

Surely, Keith just forgot. It’s not like they ever talked about this. It’s not like he made a point of telling Keith how hungry he’s been for the feeling of Keith’s hands touching him everywhere, since that sensation was taken away from him half a year ago.

And it’s his own fault anyway. Keith didn’t ask him to get the piercings. Keith has been considerate about it. He’s been kind. He’s respected his wishes and left him alone.

He’d have no way of knowing that Hunk wanted nothing more than for him to push his boundaries.

He’d have no way of understanding that Hunk has built this event up in his head, to the point that it feels almost as though Keith’s forgotten some kind of important national holiday in celebration of their love.

This thought drags a sullen sigh out of him, as he finishes his shower and steps out onto the mat. He grabs a towel from the rack, rubbing it furiously over his wet hair and drying off his body. Out of habit, he’s still careful with his chest, and when the fabric of it drags against the piercings, he grits his teeth.

He tries not to imagine how Keith’s fingers would feel tugging at them instead. Already, his cock is starting to catch on to this whole train of thought. It’s perking up, ever so slightly. It’s just hard enough that he has to resist the urge not to sit down on the edge of the tub and make a mess out of himself, only seconds after getting clean.

He’s still holding out hope that Keith might come back and make good on his promise to attack him today. That he’ll even remember, after so much time has passed, that today is finally his first opportunity to do so.

He brushes his teeth instead of dwelling on this. He puts on his clothes, hangs the towel back on the rack. He decides that he’s going to make breakfast—for himself, and some extra for Keith. He tells himself that he isn’t going to be so childish as to punish Keith for not doing something that Keith probably didn’t even know that he was supposed to be doing.

He makes his way into the kitchen, looking through the cabinets and the fridge without really thinking about it, collecting various ingredients that he isn’t even paying close enough attention to. He isn’t sure if he’d even grabbed anything that he could make a meal out of, but he trusts his instincts. And he trusts Keith to be okay with eating just about anything anyway, even if it’s blatantly a stress meal that wasn’t made with even the slightest ounce of love.

He isn’t a fan of this side of himself—the side that gets anxious over even the smallest detail left out of place. The part of him that still worries that his boyfriend of four years isn’t attracted to him anymore, even though Keith hasn’t done anything differently over these last few months, save for sparing his nipples the attention that might infect the new piercings.

He knows that he would have worried about that too—if Keith had undermined his boundaries and touched them anyway. He would have been agonizing over whether or not they were suddenly infected. He would have sworn to himself that they’d swelled up, or that they felt weird, or that something was wrong with them even if nothing seemed different at all.

He doesn’t like the idea that even after everything that he’s lived through, even despite the person who he’s become, one of the most plastic parts of his personality must have been this anxiety. It must have been one of the worst things about him, too—that he couldn’t just take things at face value like Keith. That he couldn’t just allow the bad things to rolls off of his shoulders like Lance. He couldn’t just see the bigger picture like Shiro or Pidge.

He can’t just take even the worst situation and somehow turn it around in his favor, like Allura or Coran.

He turns on the burner, oiling a pan and cracking a few eggs. Keith likes omelets, he remembers. Keith likes most things, and especially the things that Hunk cooks.

He’s found that Keith likes most of the things that he does, too, if he’s really honest with himself. He likes the houseplants bathing in the sunlight in the window. He likes the socks and the pajamas that Hunk got him for Christmas last year. And sometimes, Hunk thinks, he even seems to like the anxiety and the doubt—or he doesn’t seem to mind them, at the very least, when they’re sitting up late at night and Hunk is agonizing over some silly problem. Keith says nothing but pulls him close, pressing his lips against his forehead and wrapping those long, smooth arms around his neck. He’ll whisper sometimes,  he’ll comfort Hunk in ways that sound more like mere noises than real words. And he doesn’t let go until he’s positive that Hunk feels better, doesn’t falter or show even an ounce of annoyance, no matter how silly of a problem Hunk presents to him.

Keith shows his contentment like a cat—spreading himself out wide and vulnerable on lazy Sundays on their couch. He enjoys the sunlight and ignores whatever he’s chosen on TV. He shows his contentment with very few words and small amounts of direct attention, but the subtle touching during the daytime, his presence always close and comfortable just out of the corner of Hunk’s eyes. And at night, with a sudden vigor for closeness, for contact. For all of his body to touch all of Hunk at once—the two of them wrapped together in their own pocket of heat under their blankets, Keith’s hair tickling his face. Keith’s hands everywhere on his body.

Keith’s lips on his skin, Keith’s eyes wide and blown out in the shadows, like dark mirrors. Like night skies. Like the dark side of a two way mirror that Hunk can only barely see through to whatever he’s thinking on the inside.

He knows, because of these things, that Keith loves him. He knows that Keith is still attracted to him, after all this time.

But without talking about it—without saying these things out loud just so he can hear how foolish they sound bouncing back at him, before Keith holds him and kisses him, and truly makes him feel like everything is okay—he isn’t sure if he’ll really be able to get over them on his own.

They’re good for each other, Hunk thinks. They’re different, but they fit together easily like two pieces of the same puzzle.

As the eggs sizzle on the stove, and he finds himself delving deeper and deeper into thoughts that feel more comforting than anything else that he’s been torturing himself with all morning, he can’t shake the feeling that he's being watched.

He can feel it as a prickle over his skin, as the sensation of hairs raising on the back of his neck.

He turns around at random intervals, craning his neck to look around the corner, standing on the tips of his toes to peer over the kitchen table and the back of the television into the living room. Nothing has been moved, no one seems to be there. He can’t hear anything either. There are no footsteps tapping through the hall. There’s no clinking of exercise equipment from the spare room. There’s no indication that anyone is here at all—save for himself, making breakfast. Save for the nagging feeling that he isn’t entirely alone here, that he can’t shake no matter how many times he keeps looking around.

One omelet makes its way onto a plate, for himself. He cracks a few more eggs, adds the extra ingredients. Watches the oil popping and the eggs solidifying as he waits for the chance to flip them.

He can feel eyes on his back. He swivels around, spatula held defensively in hand. He convinces himself that surely, anyone breaking into their apartment would recognize him as one of the famous Voltron Paladins. And surely, after so much strenuous, backbreaking training in space, he might actually be considered deadly even with egg-coated silicone kitchenware as his only weapon available.

Again, it doesn’t seem as though anyone is here. He lets out a long breath, hesitates for a moment before calling out into the empty quiet of the apartment.

“K-Keith, is that you?” His voice sounds far more terrified than he thinks that it should right now. “Is someone here?”

No answer. He feels stupid for even thinking that asking would work. In all of the scary movies and all of the war, never has he witnessed a single bad guy actually giving away their position because the protagonist asked them to.

He doesn’t even know what he was thinking.

But he finishes the other omelet regardless. This one makes its way into a tupperware container, where he stores it in the microwave, in hopes that it might say warm long enough for Keith to get home. If Keith isn’t back by the time that he’s done eating, he’ll move it to the fridge before he panics. Before he finally resorts to calling Keith frantically and begging to know where he is.

For now, as he steps over to the kitchen table and sets down his meal, pulling out his chair and sitting down, he decides that a text might be more efficient. It might be more lowkey.

After a few bites of his food, he composes himself enough to type something out.

**_Me 8:10 A.M._ ** _ : Hey buddy, did you leave? _

For awhile, there’s no response. He almost convinces himself that he hears a buzzing from somewhere in the house after he sends it, but he chalks it up to paranoia. He tells himself that he listened closely enough that even Keith wouldn’t be able to sneak around unnoticed for this long. And Keith wouldn’t have a reason to be so secretive anyway, not once he smelled hot food. Not once he realized that hiding away would only make him miss a decent breakfast.

He’s finished with his food by the time that he actually does receive a text. But he ignores it for a moment, in favor of cleaning off his plate in the sink. He washes off the pan, scrubbing away the grease and the grizzle from the eggs, peering out of the kitchen window down into the street as though he might possibly see Keith wandering down the sidewalk back home.

He cleans the spatula, the spoons, and a few cups left over from last night. He knows that he’ll end up scrubbing the entire apartment down if Keith doesn’t come back soon. He knows that he’s no better than some golden retriever cooped up in here, desperately wishing that his owner would come back and spend time with him, unable to function properly when he doesn’t know where they’ve gone.

And he wonders, as he dries off one hand to fish his phone out of his pocket, if maybe Keith feels this way while he’s gone somewhere too.

He feels guilty, even six months later, for not answering Keith’s texts the night that he’d gotten those silly piercings.

Keith had never asked for an apology, but now he feels as though he should have offered one anyway.

He checks his unread text. Of course it’s Keith, but he can’t stop the relief from washing over him and the sight of Keith, finally, making an entrance into his day.

**_Keith 8:25 A.M._ ** _ : No. _

He isn’t entirely sure why everything about this message—from the simplicity, to the bluntness, to the implication that Keith is hiding somewhere inside—both terrifies and invigorates him.

But in favor of not freaking out while he’s still covered in suds, he takes a moment to set his phone on the counter, finishing off the dishes and washing his hands.

He’s leaning down to grab the towel from the cabinet handle under the sink when he feels it—something warm and firm against the small of his back, sliding up. Something more tangible than the sensation of someone watching him, something so close and so unexpected that he nearly jumps out of his skin in response to it.

He reels around, hands thrown up in the air in just about the most vulnerable and useless position that his muscle memory could have possibly provided. He screeches then, just loud enough and choked enough that it sounds not even remotely human—let alone quite as baritone and intimidating as he imagines that he should be in the face of someone trying to attack him.

His heart is pounding within his chest, even as he turns to finally meet the eyes of his assailant, who’s taken a small step back and raised his own hands in the air in surrender.

And he knows that he shouldn’t have expected anyone but Keith.

He feels like an idiot for even getting so worked up about this.

As his pulse calms from an endless racket to a rhythmic, calmer speed, as his skin stops vibrating with terrified nerves, and his breath evens out to a slow enough in-and-out drag, he finally lowers his hands. He steadies himself against the counter behind him, blowing out a long breath and dragging one hand up to cover his heart.

“J-Jesus, Keith. Where the Hell have you been all day?”

He doesn’t understand why that’s the first thing that he thinks to say.

Even Keith seems slightly taken aback, as he lowers his own arms and crosses them over his chest, the line of his mouth pulled into a lopsided half-smile as he presses his teeth into his lower lip. This is an expression that Hunk is familiar with. It’s a cute one, even if he seldom admits it.

Keith snorts a laugh, cocking his head to the side. Hunk knows better than to tell him how adorable he looks. Even though it’s true, and even though he has a sneaking suspicion that Keith likes hearing it sometimes, he doesn’t want to embarrass him now that he’s finally shown his face.

“I was out on the balcony. I fell asleep.”

Hunk doesn’t even remember that they have a balcony half of the time. It’s narrow enough that they’ve never been able to find a patio chair big enough to fit out there. For smokers, he thinks. For their neighbors who know better than to smoke in their apartments, as per their lease agreement. But Keith, he knows, likes to sunbathe out there often.

Like a cat, he’s reminded of again. The mental image of Keith splayed out happily in the small sliver of balcony, soaking in the sun, is a nagging picture branding itself in the back of his thoughts.

Keith is absolutely adorable, he knows, but he forces himself not to get too wrapped up in this winding trail of thought. He knows that he won’t be able to focus on the conversation at hand if he gets too wrapped up contemplating the nuances of Keith different types of smiles.

Keith steps closer then, before Hunk can articulate any sort of response. He uncurls his arms, reaching forward and ghosting his fingers over the length of Hunk’s arm. There’s a kindling of something hot in his eyes now. His lips have smoothed out, straightened. He’s watching Hunk like he watches the sky sometimes, like he looks at the world around them.

He looks at Hunk now as he does at things that he wants—at the people who he wishes that he knew how to talk to. At their friends. At fast cars and big planes that he could pilot as fast and freely as Hunk knows that he always wishes that he still could.

But now, in this moment, he’s only looking at Hunk. And he’s smiling still, ever so slightly. He looks ravenous, starving. He looks like a lion preparing to pounce on an antelope.

Hunk swallows thickly. He knows himself well enough that he understands that he will not even remotely put up a fight. He doesn’t know why he’d even want to.

“You woke up late today,” Keith says, “I didn’t want to wake you up, but…”

He’s dragging his gaze down from Hunk’s face, to his throat, to his chest. His fingers continue to stroke over Hunk’s skin, raising goose pimples where they barely touch him.

“I’ve been hungry.”

Suddenly, he meets Hunk’s eyes. The small line of a smile spreads out wide—wide enough that Hunk can see the sharp edges of his canines peeking through the corners of his lips.

“Do you know what I want for breakfast?”

Hunk shudders under his touch, his grip tightening against the edge of the counter. Keith’s eyes are branding him, his fingers are lighting tiny fires under every part of Hunk that he touches.

“I—I… I made omelets. Yours is in… the microwave.”

He hasn’t ever been very good at dirty talk, if that’s even what this is. Keith, he’s found, is surprisingly talented at it. He’s surprisingly good with words when he’s given the right opportunity to use them.

“That’s not what I want right now,” Keith says, laughter in his voice, “but if you give me what I want… maybe I’ll fill you up too.”

Hunk’s skin is set aflame. He’s burning here. He’s so overwhelmed and already jittering with nervous excitement that he can’t think of a single reasonable thing to say right now. But Keith, in the absence of a response, leans forward and upward, pushed up on the tips of his toes. Both hands have grasped Hunk’s wrists now, and he’s kissing Hunk, with a vigor and a roughness that Hunk has grown accustomed to.

He’s pushing him firmer against the counter, pressing their bodies close together. Hunk knows that Keith can feel his cock, hard and confined even in the loose-fitting shorts that he picked for today. He knows that Keith can feel the indentations of his piercings through his shirt.

And Keith pulls away, just far enough that words fit between them. He says, low and sultry and pushed out breathlessly through gritted teeth, “I’ve waited six fucking months for this.”

Hunk is so filled with relief—that mingles in a strange, frantic way with the arousal and the fear still heavy in his belly—that he laughs. It’s short and clipped and barely there, but Keith still glowers at him anyway.

But that doesn’t stop Keith for long. He’s pressing his lips to Hunk’s throat, kissing gently, dragging the hard line of his teeth over Hunk’s adam apple. And he’s nibbling then—just softly enough that Hunk can feel him there. Just hard enough that it reminds Hunk of how easily Keith could hurt him if he really wanted to.

That realization shouldn’t fill him with so much excitement, but still, it does.

Keith’s fingers find their way under the hem of his shirt. They ghost over his belly, stopping just as the fabric constricts his reach. He lets out a small growl—something animalistic and needy, something that sends a swell of wanton heat straight down into the pits of Hunk’s belly—before pulling them out again.

“Why are you wearing clothes?” Keith huffs, breath hot against his throat, and Hunk has to resist the urge to laugh again.

“D-do you really want me to walk around here naked all the time?”

Keith sends him a look so hot that tells him, immediately, yes, that’s exactly what he’s asking for.

But Keith is on his knees then, fiddling with the button and the fly of Hunk’s pants. He’s leaning forward when the boxer-clad erection springs fourth out of Hunk’s pants, pressing an open mouth against the head of it—wrapping it in just enough heat and pressure that Hunk throws back his head, biting his lip hard to mask the noises that threaten to escape him.

Keith plays with him for a moment that feels like three eternities, all wrapped around each other in the heat here, in the frustrated phantom of pleasure, in their quiet kitchen and the early morning breeze wafting through the open windows.

Hunk is breathless and nearly gelatin by the time that Keith pulls away. His knees are shaking, threatening to buckle underneath them. He can feel the wet spot that Keith’s mouth has left against his underwear cooling in the air between them. He can feel himself slipping further and further down, until his knees are bent awkwardly forward, and his arms are flat against the counter on either side of him.

Keith looks up at him—his eyes hooded and dark. His cheeks pink, his lips deep scarlet and just a little bit swollen.

Hunk is lost looking at him, slouching strangely, ignoring the kinks developing in his lower back. Keith is talking then, his voice low and raspy.

“Turn around,” he says, “brace yourself against the counter.”

And Hunk doesn’t know if he could argue even if he wanted to. He doesn’t know if he could ever deny Keith anything that he might want. He doesn’t know if he’s just made to please, or if it’s just Keith—if he would even go as far as to take this whole thing out to the tiny balcony where everyone in the streets below could see and hear them, if only Keith would ask.

But he doesn’t have time to contemplate his apparent lack of a spine. He doesn’t have time to feel mortified about the fact that he actually wouldn’t mind seeing how excited Keith might get if the two of them were to mess around in an only semi-hidden spot.

Because when he turns, Keith is yanking his pants and his boxers down to his ankles at record speed. So fast, he thinks, that he barely has time to register the cool air hitting his bare ass—pressed up into the air—before he can feel Keith spreading his cheeks.

This isn’t the first time that he’s felt the warmth and the wetness of Keith’s tongue there. And surely, it won’t be the last. But every single time, he can’t explain why the sensation of it feels so damn good. He can’t describe the sensation that it sends skittering over his skin, or the warmth and the pressure that it builds deep inside of him, without hitting any of his truly sensitive spots at all.

He’s cupping his hands over his face, elbows unsteady on the counter. He’s moaning anyway, loud enough that he worries that maybe their neighbors will hear—maybe even the people down below, in the streets outside of their window. Maybe everyone will know now that someone inside of this apartment is being pulled apart slowly. That he’s loving every second of it, surrendering himself to a pleasure that shouldn’t feel this good. Reveling in the realization that Keith’s been keeping count too. Keith’s been just as impatient as he has.

Keith still wants him, even after all this time.

Keith’s tongue drags across a spot between his cheeks that sends vibrations of need over his skin. He’s snaking a hand around Hunk’s hips, stroking them slowly, unable to reach his cock from this particular angle, but still making his presence and his own eagerness known through these small touches.

He can feel Keith’s warm breath pushing out through his nose, tucking itself into the cleft of his ass. He doesn’t know how he looks from this angle. He isn’t sure if he should feel embarrassed or not. But he can remember the few times that Keith has allowed him to do this same thing—how it felt to touch him in such a uniquely personal way, how Keith had spread out over him and Hunk could access any part of him that he wanted to. How he could see every piece of him. How Keith had buried his face and distracted himself from his own embarrassment by taking Hunk’s cock deep down into his throat as Hunk worked his tongue over him.

Keith had been beautiful then, and maybe Keith thinks that he’s beautiful now. He can’t entirely wrap his head around the idea of it, but he accepts it nonetheless. He accepts that Keith is allowed to love him as he is—just as he loves Keith, as he is. Just as he thinks that Keith is perfection crafted into human skin. Just as he finds himself wondering if anything could ever be more beautiful and awe-inspiring than Keith’s stunning smile, Keith’s tentative laugh, Keith’s moans deep in the night, and the way that his body seems molded just right to fit against Hunk’s. How the two of them, again and again, seem to have been made entirely for one another.

He’d never given the concept of soulmates much thought. He’d never really imagined that in such a big world, there could ever be a person that existed so entirely perfect for himself. He’d never thought about love, about growing old with someone, about loving another person so much that he might feel as though he’d die without them.

But he’s here now, with Keith, delving into the deep trenches of a fuzzy, maddening pleasure. He loves Keith so much now, loves him all the time.

And he can see why so many people become so obsessed with the idea of love. If love is Keith Kogane, if love is this beautiful man loving him too.

He thinks that he can understand.

Keith is dragging his mouth away, kissing upward, stroking more clumsily with sweaty hands. He’s dragging out a shaky breath, and Hunk knows that he’s trying to think of the pros and cons of every position that they could use right now.

From behind, he won’t be able to touch the piercings, which they both know is the whole point of everything that he’s done so far. But from the front—Hunk isn’t sure what he wants so badly to see back there, but he knows that Keith likes this position anyway, for reasons that Keith always seems a little bit too flustered to discuss.

“D-did you bring lube?”

“I know what I’m doing.”

Hunk almost laughs, once again, at how quickly Keith elects to reassure him. He wonders if Keith was avoiding him for this very reason—because of his eagerness. Because he didn’t know if he was being too forward when he’d grabbed the lube and followed Hunk into the kitchen.

But Hunk makes this difficult decision for him. He turns around again, wrapping his arms around Keith’s shoulders and kissing him again. And Keith allows himself to be kissed, kisses back. Hunk can feel his long eyelashes brushing against his cheeks as he closes his eyes. He can feel Keith’s hands slowly unbuttoning his shirt until it’s opened enough to reveal the entirety of his chest and stomach.

“I wanna see you this time,” Hunk tells him, and when he pulls away, he can see the fire within Keith completely engulfing the shadows of his eyes.

After a short series of awkward repositioning, Hunk finds himself leaning the top half of his body against the counter. One leg is propped up under Keith’s arm, the other straight down, his foot flat on the floor to keep him steady. Keith is between his legs, two lube-slicked fingers inside of him. He’s kissing Hunk slowly, gently, then he’s trailing his wet mouth down Hunk’s throat, over his collar bones, all the way down to his chest.

The first hint of his tongue against the cold barbel of Hunk’s piercing jolts Hunk, suddenly, out of his thoughts. It feels different than this sort of thing has ever felt in his life, in all of the times that he’s accidentally snagged the piercings on his clothes, in all the time that Keith has played with his nipples before he got them pierced. It’s similar, of course. It’s still a tickling of pleasure. It’s still a small burst of electricity that skitters straight down to his eager cock. But now, he notices, with a long drag of a groan tumbling out from his lips, it’s somehow even _ more _ than it ever has been before.

Keith gets bolder, pumping his fingers slightly faster, scissoring them out. He’s biting down around the piercing, taking it into his mouth. He’s prodding at it with his tongue, tugging at it the best that he can with just his mouth. There’s a third finger added inside of Hunk. Keith switches to his other nipple.

Hunk does everything in his power to keep his mind here and now, to not get lost in these sensations before Keith even pushes inside of him. He tells himself that it will be worth it—just like waiting for this day to come was worth it. He tells himself that all of this will be more earth-shattering than any sex before it, if only because the anticipation has built it up to be so much more.

When Keith pulls away his fingers, Hunk tries not to allow the disappointment to show in his expression, or the hiss that whistles through his teeth. He tries not to think of Lance’s text earlier today, how Lance was completely right about the both of them. How, over the months, Lance had whined and pouted about the fact that Keith seemed so eager to forgive Hunk for getting the piercings behind his back, when Allura hadn’t stopped making a fuss about his tongue piercing since the moment that he showed her.

Hunk hadn’t had the heart to tell Lance that they were different, their situations. He hadn’t felt the need to explain to Lance that he was a fool for thinking that Keith would ever give him a hard time over anything.

He’d pretended that he was surprised too, for the sake of not getting on Lance’s already very sensitive nerves. He’d told Lance that he wasn’t sure why Keith didn’t make a big deal out of it, even though he’d had a suspicion that Lance could tell that he was lying.

And despite how quickly Lance had caught on, he would have rather died than admit that Keith was actually fairly excited about it.

Keith pushes something bigger, more solid—hotter and thicker and more pleasurable—inside of him than his fingers. This time, Hunk doesn’t hold back the noise that rumbles in his throat.

Keith has never been anything but good to him. Keith, despite his thorny exterior, is nothing but loving and supportive when it really matters.

And Keith is taking things slowly, carefully, even though Hunk can tell from the way that he’s trembling now that he would love nothing more than to let loose and take Hunk as roughly and carelessly as humanly possible.

Hunk wishes that he were brave enough to ask for it rough. But even during their kinkier nights together, he can’t help but enjoy the way that Keith is adamant to shower him with so much love.

Even now, Keith is kissing the center of his chest. He’s taking his time, pulling out halfway, gradually. Pushing back in with such aching gentleness that Hunk feels as though he’s already being driven dreadfully close to the edge.

They’re moving together now, slowly, quietly. Hunk can hear their breaths huffing around him, mingling together in his ears. He can feel nothing but Keith inside of him, Keith all around him, Keith engulfing him in a blanket of heat, all-consuming, everywhere that he might hope to reach.

It’s all Keith—kissing him, touching him. Keith reaching between them now, careful as to not knock them off-balance, and grasping Hunk’s aching cock around the base. He pumps then, somehow, in nearly perfect time with his thrusts.

Hunk can see the world blurring around him, their kitchen saturated with too much, too bright, too harsh color. He can feel the hot knot of heat in his belly coming uncoiled. He’s seeing stars, too soon, really. Far too quickly for how long he wanted this to last. And he’s cumming with a cry through his teeth digging hard into his bottom lip. He’s cumming with tears prickling at the corners of his eyes, with his entire body shaking desperately and still set to flame.

Keith, soon after, buries himself deep inside of Hunk, just before he cums. His quiet noises are drowned out with his teeth pressed hard into a patch of skin just under Hunk’s shoulder.

Hunk can feel the warmth of Keith’s seed filling him up. He can feel Keith go lax against him, releasing his leg from over his arm. He’s lying halfway on the counter still. He feels far too rubbery and boneless to even be sore. Keith is leaning forward to kiss him—to pepper his face with these kisses, his chest, the piercings on his nipples.

With a long drag of a sigh, Keith tells him, “I still think they look nice.”

And Hunk laughs, slowly pulls himself away from the counter.

He can feel Keith’s cum beginning to spill out from him, running in slow trails down his thighs. He clasps them close together in hopes of keeping the mess contained.

Keith helps him clean up. They make small talk as though none of this is awkward or weird at all. Keith tells him about some noisy person on the street that kept waking him from his nap on the balcony. He tells a flustered Keith about Lance’s texts earlier.

And finally, Keith eats his omelet. It’s only just a little bit cold from sitting in the microwave for too long.

He doesn’t complain. He eats quietly. Hunk thinks that he still seems as though he enjoys it.

But when he’s done, he sends Hunk another hot half-smile.

He looks at him with dark, hooded eyes, the ravenous, hungry enthusiasm that sends skitters of excitement trembling through Hunk’s body.

And Hunk knows, undoubtedly, that now he’s ready for dessert.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there! Flyingisland here, but you can just call me Moth! So the story behind this particular gift is sort of… embarrassing. But I’ll tell it anyway.  
> A few months ago, I posted [a short Heith drabble](https://curionabang.tumblr.com/post/171149078343/sunday) on tumblr, and [Peach](http://space-peachx.tumblr.com/), the lovely person that they are, reblogged it with the sweetest notes that I think I’ve ever had the pleasure of receiving on tumblr.
> 
> I’ve been sitting on this story for a couple of months now, wondering if it’s weird or not to gift something this long to a person who you don’t know, but… despite that, I really hope that you enjoyed it, Peach! I really wanted to make you something that I thought you’d enjoy, just to let you know… you’re appreciated! Every time that I see you online, you’re always so sweet, so thoughtful, and such a positive staple in a fandom that sometimes gets itself in a lot of trouble. I look forward to being able to enjoy your work in the future, and I hope, even just a little, that this story managed to brighten your day.
> 
> To everyone else, thank you so much for reading! I really hope that you guys enjoyed this ridiculous story as well!


End file.
